The invention generally relates to the field of cell telecommunication networks and more particularly to the use of small cells.
The increasingly widespread use of terminals connected to a cell network (e.g. smartphones, computers, etc.) has caused an increase in traffic which means that cell networks are becoming more and more overloaded.
To overcome this problem, small cell networks have been proposed and deployed.
It is specified that the term small cell encompasses in order of increasing size: an attocell, femtocell, pico-cell or further a micro-cell.
A small cell comprises a small base station of low power designed to offer limited radio coverage especially dedicated to residential or in-company use. Small cells are often deployed inside buildings and are connected to an operator's network via a high-speed internet connection and are able to carry a limited number of simultaneous communications (voice or data) typically from two to eight simultaneous communications.
Small cells therefore allow improved cell coverage and improved operator network capacity within a given area.
One problem is that small cells are often deployed in chaotic manner with no real planning so that the level of interference between neighbouring cells is increased (a communication in one cell may hinder communication in the neighbouring cell).
Another problem is that said deployment reduces the energy efficiency of the network since some areas may be over-equipped with small cells, causing unnecessary energy consumption, the small cells possibly being unnecessarily activated.
Reference can be made to the document by Y. Chen, S. Zhang and S. Xu: “Characterizing Energy Efficiency and Deployment Efficiency Relations for Green Architecture Design”, Proc. IEEE ICC'10, Cape Town, South Africa, May 2010 which evidences such problems.
There is therefore a need for smart, dynamic activation of small cells to limit energy costs and at the same time to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) for users.